Noise

As an urban DXer, not expecting to go on a DXpedition to Lapland any time soon, I have frequently wondered about what benefit might be gained from taking a portable radio to a local park in order to put some distance between me and my neighbourhood RFI sources. As soon as I acquired a Tecsun PL-380 ultralight receiver and noticed that it has a digital readout that displays signal strength to the nearest dBu, I got the idea of making a survey of some promising locations, most of which are within a half-hour drive of my home. The following chart shows my preliminary results.


I am not likely to go to the effort of adding realistic error bars so I will just say that some of the curves are more meaningful than others. The ones to take most seriously are the ones labeled Balcony and Cattle Point because they are averages from about 10 sets of data each. The former is from my home in a very old wood-frame house. The latter is from just above the high tide line at a park.
More details and more data will follow.


2 comments:

  1. Brian, are you saying that the tropical bands are universally noisy?, and what is PSRS?

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  2. Based on measurements taken at only seven locations, all within a 2-hour drive of each other, I certainly cannot claim that my results indicate anything that might be considered universal. I have only been taking a systematic look at noise since December but, in my ears of recreational radio, the tropical bands have quite consistently been the noisiest part of the HF spectrum.

    If you follow the blog you should soon see a couple of screen shots from my Perseus SDR working as a 40 MHz spectrum analyser from the location labeled Fence. However, the intent of this project is to investigate noise as a function of location rather than frequency.

    PSRS is an abbreviation for Pacific Shores Resort and Spa, located between Nanoose Bay and Parksville on Vancouver island. It is at the opposite end of Craig Bay from the site labeled Rathtrevor.

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